Op-Ed: Living fossils challenges Darwinism

Today, living fossils create problems for paleontologists with Darwinian assumptions. The discoveries of living Wollemi pines, Coelacanth fishes, the Nautilus, and other animals have challenged evolutionary assumptions about life’s history.

For years, the scientific community has claimed that Wollemi pines were extinct plant species only found in the fossil record. Fossil evidence of the Wollemi Pine goes back to the mid-Cretaceous, and possibly even the Early Cretaceous period some 90 million years ago. Additionally, there are dinosaur fossil records dating to that time. Dinosaurs crossed paths with the Wollemi Pine, according to many paleontologists. However, today Wollemi pines are for sale at Beds & Borders Nursery in Parrish, Florida. In the wild, Wollemi pines are still among the rarest plants in the world, according to the Herald Tribune science report.

Coelacanths are fishes dubbed as "living fossil" because they have not changed fundamentally for 450 million years. The fishes are still able to genetically adapt to their environment. While the scientific community has confirmed that coelacanths’ existence, the fishes’ morphology has not transformed significantly since the Devonian epoch, according to UPI science report.

Other fossils like the Metasequoia, the Nightcap Oak trees, the Chacoan Peccary pigs, and Mountain Pygmy Possum were all theorized by Darwinists and evolutionists to have died out many million years past before they were found alive again. The fossil animals were relatively unchanged from the way their modern descendants appear today.

Today, a living fossil named the Nautilus, a marine animal, has been in danger because its attractive spiraling shell makes a nice home decoration. Although the Nautilus has survived major mass extinctions in Earth's geological history, it is presently fewer in numbers because people have been collecting the living animals for their beautiful shells. The Nautilus is basically the same sea creature it has always been. This marine animal has survived for roughly 450 million years, changing enough to evolve into several variations of the same species, with similar designs, but always still a Nautilus, according to Sci-Tech Today and AQUAVIEWS science report.

Darwinian Dogma

Darwinists and evolutionists believe that life on planet Earth has transformed over millions of years because of natural selection and genetic mutations, or the survival of the fittest species. In other words, when changes occur within the environment, those animals that are better at adapting to the new climatic changes or disruptions with their habitat survive, while the rest die out. These environmental changes facilitate the evolution of new animal species. Classic Darwinism describes evolutionary transformations as a gradual series of steps where one kind of animal slowly changes into a new type of animal through a process of speciation and extinction.

However, the first problem with Darwin's phyletic gradualism is that natural selection only selects from pre-existing genetic information within the animal population; therefore, this fact only facilitates variation within plant and animal species, but never the evolution of new types of animals and plants.

The second problem with Darwinian phyletic gradualism is that genetic mutations cannot create bran new genes because all scientific observations show that genetic mutations cause the loss of genetic information or the duplication of the same kind of genetic data, but never the evolution of new genes. Therefore, the belief that new genes can originate from genetic mutations is pure dogma.

And the third problem with Darwinian phyletic gradualism is that this theory is simply not supported by the fossil record. Darwin believed that when paleontologists dug up more fossils, they would discover gradual animal transformations proliferating throughout the fossil record to support his evolution theory. However, in every major division of life, paleontologists recognize gaps within the fossil record. Rather than showing a gradual series of evolutionary steps from old animal life forms becoming new animal species, the fossil record continually shows specific animal groups that display variation within their groupings, but do not demonstrate the required direct scientific evidence for confirming the evolution of new species. Today paleontologists cannot concur unanimously upon the existence of any claimed transitional form, which is simply amazing considering that many Darwinists believe that life has been on the planet for 3.5 billion years.

Darwinism Analysis

Today, living fossils have inflicted damage to the religious dogma in Darwinism. Darwinists are struggling to find real transitional fossil forms because the few they claim to be evidence are considered to be suspect by other evolutionists. Nevertheless, Darwinists are correct when they say life has evolved. The families and genera of all living systems have changed over time, but the more they change the more they remain the same. The weight of scientific evidence demonstrates that micro-evolution is a fact of life because it describes the variation of plant and animal species and it has been confirmed by the fossil record. However, macro-evolution is simply a religious philosophy that has been applied to science because natural selection and genetic mutations will not allow for Dinosaurs to become birds and fly away, or for land animals to go into the seas and become dolphins and whales, or for apes to become human beings . Macro-evolution is a religious movement because it does not meet the test of the scientific method, which requires observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and theory. Since the scientific community cannot make observations and conduct experiments on distant past evolutionary processes, then marco-evolution is simply hypothesis and theory, which is only speculation and conjecture, but not observational science.

This opinion article was written by an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not necessarily intended to reflect those of DigitalJournal.com